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Jeff Ruby rolled into Nashville three and a half years ago on a branded tour bus with a cowboy hat on his head and declared Music City the new home of one of the most lavish steakhouses he’s ever built.
The Ohio-based restaurateur was banking on Nashville’s unwavering appetite for red meat and potatoes, even as the city’s culinary status reached new heights.
A fresh Vietnamese eatery, a restaurant with an anti-inflammatory foods menu, several seafood and oyster joints, a string of tiki bars, Middle Eastern restaurants and Detroit-style pizza have all landed in Nashville in the past couple years.
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A bone-in filet is prepared in the kitchen at Jimmy Kelly's Steakhouse in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018. (Photo: Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean)
So have at least five new steakhouses.
Just like Ruby, the restaurant owners behind steakhouse c...

Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment, which operates three steakhouses in Cincinnati and six across three states, launched a new loyalty program that uses technology to learn from its diners.
The Ruby restaurants have had a loyalty program going back 25 years, but it involved a lot of manpower with staff manually keeping track of diners' spending and totaling up rewards points earned quarterly.
The new system is entirely digital and brings more to the Rubys than incentivizing diners to come back: It uses data and analytics to learn about customers and their preferences and habits.
For instance, if a customer shows a proclivity toward bourbon, they can get an invitation to an exclusive bourbon dinner, Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment president Britney Ruby Miller told me. Same for wine.
It can also track things like how long they've been dining at Ruby establishments...

Thank you so much to OpenTable Diners for naming Jeff Ruby's Carlo & Johnny and Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse Nashville as two of the 100 Best Restaurants For Wine Lovers In America, 2018. Further, they were the only restaurants named in Cincinnati and Nashville! Click below for more information:
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Featuring exquisite vintage wines from renowned wineries as well as those harvested from local vineyards, OpenTable's list of the 100 Best Restaurants for Wine Lovers in America highlights some of the country’s best wine lists. Whether it’s a crisp white or silky red, these restaurants provide the perfect wine pairing for every meal year-round. The list of honorees is based on an analysis of 12,000,000+ reviews of more than 28,000 restaurants across the country—all submitted by verified diners!

Jeff Ruby is dropping more details about his eponymous Lexington restaurant, which will be opening next spring in Lexington.
The Cincinnati steakhouse owner posted a sketch on his Twitter account of the private Gatsby Room. “Our team is excited to bring you this magnificent restaurant/nightclub. Thanks for waiting so long. I never gave up,” Ruby. Ruby also tweeted on Wednesday about the Lexington steakhouse that he “was given an unlimited budget and have already exceeded it. ... Won’t let you down.”
In an interview with the Herald-Leader last month, Ruby said that the restaurant in the City Center downtown development will be “magical.”
His company filed for a permit to begin building in the base of the Marriott hotel under construction at the corner of Limestone and Vine. Work is expected to begin Oct. 1.
Britney Ruby Miller, who runs t...

BY JANET PATTON
jpatton1@herald-leader.com
August 31, 2018 08:45 AM
After waiting more than seven years, Jeff Ruby knows Lexington is hungry. And he’s ready to bring more than just great steaks. He’s bringing the unique “Jeff Ruby Experience” to town.
“Lexington deserves our best restaurant, and this will be our best one,” Ruby said. “When you wait that long, you better not let them down. They’re expecting something magical, and I won’t let them down.”
Ruby began his quest to put a restaurant in Lexington in 2011 with the on-again, off-again CentrePointe project. At one point, it looked like the Cincinnati-based restaurateur would have to find another location.“It’ll be how many years in the making? I signed the lease originally … Bin Laden was alive, I know that,” R...

By Andy Brownfield – Reporter, Cincinnati Business Courier
Britney Ruby Miller was never pushed to follow the path of her father, Jeff Ruby, into the restaurant industry. In fact, he actually tried to deter her, but she fell into it. She and her brothers grew up in Ruby’s restaurants. The Precinct was their playground where they played hide-and-seek at the tables and learned the ins and outs of table-side cooking.
As teenagers do, Ruby Miller worked summer jobs, starting with a gig hostessing at the Waterfront, where she was mentored by Charlie Bledsoe, now general manager at Carlo & Johnny, who made her train under all of the different stations at the restaurant.
That’s where she fell in love with cooking. She attended the Midwest Culinary Institute and, in an act of rebellion, started her...

In July 2018, the Ruby family was invited to Washington, D.C. to meet with lawmakers and discuss issues surrounding the Foster System and the Jeff Ruby Foundation’s plans to help improve it.
Jeff Ruby was also asked to keynote an event for the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (C.C.A.I.).
Click "Read More" below to view his speech to an inspiring group of former foster kids who are now working on Capitol Hill and making a real difference.
Enjoy!

The Cincinnati Business Courier has announced its 2018 Forty Under 40 class. The annual awards program recognizes young professionals in Greater Cincinnati who are building successful careers while also giving back.
The honorees represent a broad slice of our business community – small startups, big public companies, nonprofits and wealth management, to name a few.
The Forty Under 40 and Second Act awards luncheon will take place 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. on Sept. 18 at the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati at 151 W. Fifth St. Click here for more information or to register for the event.

By Bill Cieslewicz – Managing editor, Cincinnati Business Courier
Jul 9, 2018, 6:05am
Nine Greater Cincinnati restaurants, including three owned by Jeff Ruby, received 2018 Wine Spectator awards, which honor the world’s best wine restaurants.
The awards, which began in 1981, are broken down into three levels. The three Ruby restaurants received Best of Award of Excellence awards, the middle tier. The other six earned Award of Excellence honors, the lowest designation. The highest tier, the Grand Award, was given to just 91 total winners worldwide.
The Greater Cincinnati winners:
Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse, downtown, Best of Award of Excellence since 2014
Carlo & Johnny’s, Montgomery, Best of Award of Excellence since 2015
The Precinct, Columbia Tusculum, Best of Award of Excellence since 2017
...